For 13 years he served as a reporter and editor for the Hobbs Daily News Sun, where his first love was the high school sports beat. For many years he followed and chronicled the career of legendary Hobbs High School basketball coach Ralph Tasker, the second-winningest high school basketball coach in U.S. history. Tasker died in 1999.
In 1964, the PC(USA) beckoned and Jameson, a Presbyterian elder, moved to New York, where he served as associate director, director and managing director of the Presbyterian Office of Information from 1964-1983.
At Presbyterian reunion in 1983, Jameson moved to Atlanta as editor of the PC(USA)’s denominational magazine, Presbyterian Survey (now Presbyterians Today). He moved to Louisville in 1988 when the denomination’s national office relocated there.
“I knew Vic by reputation long before he moved to Atlanta and we became friends,” said Walt Sutton, a longtime editor and publisher for the PC(USA). “What I’ll always appreciate most about Vic is that he avoided pomposity and deflated it wherever and whenever he could.”
Jameson was also “ardent about his faith,” Sutton added, which consistently showed up in his editorials and in the poems he composed for inclusion with his Christmas card every year. Sutton said he knows many of Jameson’s friends have collected those cards to keep the poems.
“I will always be grateful to Vic for hiring me into what he called ‘one of the best jobs in the church,’” said current Presbyterians Today editor Eva Stimson, whom Jameson hired as assistant editor in 1984. “He was a mentor to me as I learned the business of journalism and putting together a church magazine.”
Jameson officially retired in 1991, but continued to write and edit up until his death for such publications as These Days devotional magazine and Presbyterian Voice, the newspaper of the Synod of Living Waters. In 1992, Jameson was named Distinguished Writer of the Year by the Presbyterian Writers Guild.
For many years, Jameson was a fixture in the General Assembly Newsroom, where his wry humor and keen insight into the politics of the church made him an invaluable reporter and mentor to others. Along with his longtime friend, the late Jim Gittings, he was also known to provide the best hospitality available at the Assembly.
“Vic was the one I worked closest with,” said former General Assembly moderator Marj Carpenter, who directed the Presbyterian News Service from 1978-1993. “He cared immensely about the Presbyterian Church and about sharing the good news the church was doing. We never had a cross word, even when we disagreed.” Carpenter recalled that Jameson used to say: “If you’re a real writer, you just have to write — you can’t help yourself.”
Bill Henning, a retired minister who recruited Jameson to be Presbyterian Survey editor and who worked with him in many General Assembly newsrooms, called Jameson “a solid and sweet guy. Vic was a writer, a poet, a humorist, an artist — he was tuned to a different frequency than me, but we always got along great and I could always count on him to come with something brilliant.”
Jameson was the father of two sons, Mike and Ron, and grandfather of Laurel, Jordan, Ransom, and Max. His late wife, Frances, an attorney and former PC(USA) national staff member, died last year.
A memorial service for Vic Jameson will be held at First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, where he was a member.
The wit of Vic Jameson
Fifteen years ago, while serving as president of the Presbyterian Writers Guild, Vic Jameson penned “The Presbyterian Writers Guild Hymn.” It is sung, barely in unison, at the start of each Presbyterian Writers Guild General Assembly luncheon, to the tune “Glorious Things of Thee are Spoken”:
Glorious words we all have written,
members of the Writers Guild;
With our skills we all are smitten
and with virtue we are filled.
We are bound to be immortal;
great renown is our intent.
We will rest in Heaven’s portal
if we just can get in print.
We will be an inspiration,
as we write our lovely words.
Every tribe and every nation
will be glad they’ve read or heard
all our works of smiles and sadness
and the joy we bring to them;
While our hearts are filled with gladness
as the royalties roll in.
We will make the world much brighter
with our poems and with our prose.
And the byline of each writer
will be one creation knows.
We will find that we are listed
in the heavenly Hall of Fame.
And each one will have requested:
Please, God, don’t misspell my name!
